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New Drobos Add Drive Bay, Higher Price

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:08:46 -0600

Data Robotics is refreshing its excellent line of Drobo automated external hard drive enclosures. The Silicon Valley startup is launching the Drobo S and DroboElite. The Drobo S is similar to the standard Drobo but offers a fifth drive bay, allowing up to two drives to fail with no data loss. The new ‘S’ version also packs a faster ARM chip and an eSATA port to go along with the FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports. Users can enable dual drive redundancy via the software control panel.

The DroboElite is intended for enterprise use. It has room for 8 SATA drives, much like the older DroboPro. The Elite now comes equipped with two gigabit Ethernet ports as the only connection method. You won’t find any iSCSI or FireWire like on the Pro. There is however, a USB port intended for device management, not everyday use. The DroboElite is definitely not something for consumers to go pick up.

The new units are shipping now. The Drobo S is going for $799 and the DroboElite for $3,499. The standard Drobo will continue to be sold for $399.

Synology Announces 4-bay NAS with Support for Apple's Time Machine

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:50:10 -0600

Synology has a history of making excellent NAS boxes, and the new four bay DS410j is no exception. Front and center on the spec sheet is support for Apple’s Time Machine backup system, a rarity on third-party NAS units.

The unit is designed for home and entry-level business use. The four drive bays can take up to 2TB 3.5 inch drives. The DS410j also supports multiple RAID configurations when loaded with multiple compatible drives. Automated backup and DNLA support come standard as well. The DS410j can be purchased with or without hard drives preinstalled, but either way it’s going to be pricey. If you look around, the driveless version can be had for a bit under $400.

Intel X-25M 160GB MLC SSD

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:30:00 -0500

Intel's killer solid state drive gets a capacity increase, but is it still the best?

Last fall, Intel slapped the solid state drive market on the back of the head with the release of the 80GB X25-M MLC drive. That drive absolutely trounced the competition with its 200MB/s read speeds, incredibly low random-access times, and best of all, no random-write stuttering or cache overflows. The first X25-M garnered a Kick Ass Award and defeated all comers in our last SSD roundup (November 2008), but the market has come a long way since then. With powerful competition from drives sporting Indilinx and Samsung controllers, can the 160GB X25-M maintain Intel’s crown?

The 160GB X25-M ships in a silvery chassis, unlike its predecessor’s black, and is 7mm tall—an included spacer accommodates 9.5mm drive bays. Intel’s kicked the flash manufacturing process down from 50nm to 34nm, and retained native SATA and Native Command Queuing from its previous iteration.

The new X25-M ships with a spacer so it can fit in 9.5mm as well as 7mm 2.5-inch drive bays.

First, the good news. The 160GB X25-M is even faster than the 80GB, offering 209MB/s sustained reads and 79.5MB/s sustained writes in our h2benchw benchmark, compared to the 80GB version’s 206MB/s and 64MB/s, respectively. Random-access reads and writes are within .01ms of the 80GB version, and Premiere Pro times are five percent faster. Oddly, though, its PCMark Vantage score is only 23,288—faster than nearly every drive but its predecessor, which amassed a cool 30K.

Unfortunately, the X25-M just isn’t the coolest kid on the block anymore. Not since we’ve seen other drives come along and smash the 100MB/s sustained-write barrier, or which feature either a Samsung or Indilinx drive controller with cache that eliminates the random-write stuttering that plagued early JM602-based drives. Both Samsung’s 256GB drive (reviewed August 2009, retailing as the Corsair P256) and Patriot’s Torqx (September 2009) nearly match X25-M’s read speeds and obliterate its sequential writes, with the Torqx and its fellow Indilinx Barefoot MLC drives (OCZ Vertex, G.Skill Falcon) offering write speeds close to 175MB/s.

The X25-M still reigns supreme in random-write times, though, with a latency of just .08ms compared to the Torqx’s .31ms. And it does so without the Indilinx controller’s 64MB of DRAM cache.

The X25-M remains a rock-solid choice for SSDs, and its read speeds and random-write response times are second to none. But in sustained-write speeds, it’s no match for the Patriot Torqx and its peers. But hey, the 160GB X25-M is $.10/GB cheaper than the Torqx, and 160GB is enough room for your OS and a dozen of your favorite games.

Samsung 256GB MLC SSD

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Expensive, but worth it

[Editor's Note: This drive retails as the Corsair P256. At the time this review was first published, Samsung had announced no retail partners.]

Solid state drives show immense promise with regards to reliability and read speeds, but current-generation models are rife with drawbacks. Due to NAND flash memory’s architecture, writing data to a block (after the first time) requires copying the entire contents of that block to cache, erasing it, and rewriting it with the added data. Large numbers of small writes run the risk of overloading the SSD’s disk cache, causing high latency. Multi Layer Cell (MLC) solid state drives, especially those utilizing JMicron’s JM602 controller, are particularly susceptible.

Fortunately, Samsung’s SSDs, like Intel’s (whose X25-M is the gold standard for solid state drives), use their own controllers, and the results are impressive. This 256GB SSD reached sustained average read speeds of 175MB/s, just 12 percent slower than the Intel drive and 75 percent faster than a Western Digital VelociRaptor. Better still, the Samsung drive’s average sustained write speeds topped 150MB/s, much faster than the 64.3MB/s average offered by the Intel drive. Oddly, Intel’s X25-M still reigns supreme in our Premiere Pro encoding test, beating the Samsung drive by nearly two minutes. The Samsung’s random access times, while slightly slower than the X25-M’s, still average at under .2ms for read and write.

The Samsung drive’s PCMark Vantage score, at 14,088, is less than half that of the Intel drive’s, but still double that of any standard hard drive.

Samsung's new 256GB SSD crushes the competition in capacity and write speeds.

Now to that pesky random-write latency issue that vexes SSDs: The Samsung controller hung up only a few times, once giving a random-access write latency of 294.5ms, which is enough for a noticeable lag. However, this occurred infrequently enough that the average random-access write latency was .16ms, several thousand times faster than the CSX 128GB SSD, for example, which used the flawed JMicron controller.

The Samsung 256GB SSD, then, exhibits blazing-fast read speeds, and its write speeds are not just fast but consistently fast, at an average of 150MB/s, which is a nice change from the status quo. Even better, this SSD has a high enough capacity to run both the OS and applications (like games and media-creation apps) that can benefit from its high read and write speeds and low latency.

Samsung doesn’t currently plan to offer the 256GB MLC SSD through normal retail channels, but the Corsair P256 SSD, which features the same hardware, is available on NewEgg and other retailers, and the Samsung OEM version is available as an add-in in some Dell and Alienware computers. Its read speeds are nearly on par with the X-25M, its writes are much faster, and it has three times the capacity. If you’ve got the scratch, this is one of the few SSDs currently out that we can unreservedly recommend.

Editor's Note: Added language indicating Corsair P256 as rebranded version of this drive.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Introducing the first two-platter terabyte drive

It was a big month for storage. Not only did Western Digital bring to the market the first 2TB consumer hard drive, but Seagate came to the game with another milestone: a two-platter 1TB drive. Both offerings contain 500GB platters, the highest platter density yet achieved.

The Barracuda 7200.12 1TB is the first drive we’ve tested from the 12th generation of Seagate’s 7,200rpm Barracuda line, and it’s Seagate’s best chance for a fresh start following the firmware issues that plagued its 7200.11 line.

The 1TB 7200.12 has much in common with drives from the previous generation of Barracudas: It features 32MB of L2 cache, 7,200rpm rotational speeds, and SATA 3Gb/s data transfer with Native Command Queuing. The 7200.12, though, needs just two platters to achieve 1TB, whereas the 7200.11 used four.

The next-generation Seagate Barracuda is wicked-fast.

Generally, fewer platters mean higher areal density, which translates into better performance. For example, our previous favorite terabyte drive, the Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ, used three platters and outperformed the older Barracuda’s four platters. So surely a two-platter drive will be faster, right?

Yup. The new 1TB Barracuda’s read and write speeds approach those of the Western Digital Velociraptor. The Barracuda’s average sustained reads in our h2benchw benchmark exceeded 100MB/s, 7 percent faster than the Samsung’s, while sustained write speeds were an impressive 99.3MB/s, nearly 14 percent faster than the Samsung drive. Random access reads were more than 25 percent quicker on the Barracuda, burst speeds were 24MB/s faster, and the Barracuda’s PCMark Vantage score was more than 25 percent higher than the Samsung’s. In fact, only the Barracuda’s random-access write speeds failed to beat the Samsung’s—at 15.2ms, they’re still zippy, but no match for the Samsung’s 9.8ms response time.

The 1TB 7200.12 drive has a list price of $150 and a street price of about $120, which puts it in direct competition with its older, bigger cousin, the 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11—which has retailed for around $140 consistently for months. The 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green fetches $300.

As appealing as the Caviar’s eco-friendly message may be, you can actually save money by buying two of the 7200.12 drives—and get better performance to boot.

Everything You Need to Know about SATA 6Gb/sec

Nathan Edwards — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:30:00 -0500

Today, hard drive manufacturer Seagate and chip manufacturer AMD unveiled the first tech demo of Serial ATA Revision 3.0, which boasts transfer rates of up to six gigabits per second, twice the speed of the current SATA spec. The specification, which was announced by the Serial ATA International Organization last August, will appear in hardware starting later this year.

This image, provided by Seagate, shows read speeds from the drive buffer. Shiny!

SATA 6Gb/s comes several years before Seagate estimates it will be needed for standard hard drives, but, as we reported last year, several current-gen SSDs are already bumping against the 3Gb/s limit of the current spec.

Wait, What?

Seagate points out that new disk interface specs are typically released a few years before they’re needed—SATA 3Gb/s came out in 2005, for example, and is now nearly ubiquitous, while the first SATA spec came out in 2002 and was needed by 2003. You don't ever want to get to a point where your data connectors are the bottleneck in your computer. Some SSDs, like the Intel X-25M, are already hitting close to 250MB/s read speeds, which is about all that the 3Gb/sec SATA can handle (with overhead).

When can I buy it?

Not yet. Neither Seagate, AMD, nor anyone else have announced any products based on the SATA 6Gb/sec spec yet, but they expect the first products to start shipping near the end of this year.

So it's faster? That's all?

That ain't all. The new spec also includes greater support for streaming operations in its Native Command Queue, so you can do streaming reads/writes without grinding all the rest of your operations to a halt.

What about compatibility issues? SATA 3Gb/sec suffered from some of those.

According to Mark Noblit at Seagate, no compatibility issues have come up; the new spec remains entirely backward-compatible.

So why isn't there an exciting picture of this exciting new technology?

Because a 6Gb/sec SATA port looks just like a 1.5Gb/sec SATA port looks just like a 3Gb/sec SATA port. Ditto for cables and connectors. Maybe they'll be different colors.

What about eSATA?

Seagate assures us that 6Gb/sec eSATA will be available.

Won't this compete with USB 3.0, when that comes out?

Not any more than USB 2.0 competes with SATA 3Gb/sec now. USB will probably remain dominant for external devices, although eSATA will become more common, and SATA will still be the rule for internal devices.

So I'll have to buy Seagate drives and AMD motherboards to get SATA 6Gb/sec?

No. SATA is an open spec that any hardware manufacturer can make. Seagate and AMD are the first to do a public tech demo, and may well be the first to announce SATA 3.0 products, but you can expect every drive maker and southbridge manufacturer to be in on this.

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:30:19 -0600

Editorial Correction: This review initially stated that the WD Caviar Green 2TB has a variable rotation speed between 5400rpm and 7200rpm. WD has since clarified that Caviar Green drives have steady spindle speeds, but they don't disclose the exact speeds, except that they are somewhere between 5400 and 7200rpm.

Western Digital just upped the capacity ante with a mind-blowing two-terabye internal hard drive. It doesn’t break any land speed records, but the 2TB Caviar Green is unmatched for capacity—at least for now.

The Caviar Green 2TB packs a full 500GB more onto its four platters than our previous capacity champion, Seagate’s 1.5TB 7200.11 Barracuda, which has suffered from firmware-related hitches and freezing. The Barracuda (when it works) marries speedy performance with high capacity, while the Caviar Green, like the rest of Western Digital’s Green line, focuses on quiet performance and lower power consumption. The 2TB Caviar Green has four 500GB platters spinning a rate somewhere between 5,400 and 7,200rpm, with a 32MB cache, and an areal density per platter of 400Gb/square inch.

This isn’t the drive for speed freaks—it can’t match the read or write speeds of this generation’s terabyte drives, much less the 1.5TB Barracuda or the WD Velociraptor, but what it lacks in raw performance it makes up in capacity. The Caviar Green offers sustained read speeds in h2benchw of 76MB/s, around 25% slower than the Barracuda, while its write speeds are more competitive: 76.5MB/s versus the Barracuda’s 85.7MB/s. Real-world, that means writing a 4GB file to the Caviar Green takes about five seconds longer than the Seagate drive—52 seconds to 47. Its burst read speed, though, beats the Barracuda’s, clocking in at 218MB/s to the Seagate’s 209MB/s. The Caviar Green’s PCMark Vantage score is about 15% lower than the Barracuda’s. Random-access read times for both drives are around 12ms, while the Caviar’s random write latency is around 6.7ms, 1.4ms slower than the Barracuda’s.

Western Digital’s 2TB Caviar Green is available now for $300. It still doesn’t beat the 1.5TB Barracuda’s on price or performance. We love its massive capacity and quiet performance, but are less impressed with its midrange speeds and modest power savings. The 2TB Caviar Green could make a great storage drive to complement a speedy SSD or Velociraptor, and right now it's is the only alternative for users who need more than 1TB of storage but are wary of entrusting their data to the Barracuda and its frisky firmware.

How To: Encrypt Your Entire Hard Drive The Easy Way Using TrueCrypt

Justin Kerr — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:30:00 -0600

Hard drive encryption sounds like an intimating concept, mostly because it is. The thought of taking your precious files, then using a mathematical formula to convert them into random noise before scattering them back across your disk is a hard sell. The harsh reality is, mobile computing is on the rise, and so is laptop theft. Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 laptops are lost or stolen in the US each year. In some cases, the data on the hard drive is often more valuable than the machine itself.

To determine if disk encryption is something you should be considering, simply ask yourself if your PC contains anything you wouldn’t want posted publically on the internet. If the answer to this is yes (and I assume for most of us it is) then encryption is worth considering.

What you'll Need:

* A Windows/MAC/Linux PC
* A Backup of Your Data (Just a Precaution!)

*A Hard Drive (Or Any Detachable Media)

    * 30 Minutes For Each 100 GB of Hard Drive

      Space Encrypted (Estimate)

AND

- True Crypt Installer
Free, Version 6.1a or Better

- ISO Burning Software
Free, CDBurnerXP

The good news is you no longer need to be a member of the CIA to lock down your machine with government level encryption. In fact, one of the most highly regarded and powerful encryption tools available is both free, and open source (our favorite combination!) True Crypt allows you to protect either all your data, or only what you choose. You can mask your boot drive and sensitive documents, while leaving your games or other non generic data in the clear. While no encryption process is without risk, True Crypt is designed to put your mind at ease, and takes no chances with your data. The process can be reversed at any time even without being able to boot into windows.

So if you're ready to get started click the jump to learn step by step how to protect your data.

1. Familiarize Yourself with the Tools and Determine what Kind of Protection you Need

Upon entering TrueCrypt you will notice that the interface is very simple and well laid out. The majority of the UI displayed on the main screen (shown above) has more to do with the primary focus of TrueCrypt up until version 5; the mounting and unmounting of encrypted file containers. These are for user’s who don’t feel the need to encrypt their entire drive. TrueCrypt allows you to create a single file which is essentially a huge blob of encrypted data. Using the above interface you are able to mount this file as volume which will appear to Windows as a standard drive. Once done, you will be able to read and write from the drive while TrueCrypt provides on the fly encryption/decryption.

This is an elegant solution if you merely wish to protect a group of files and not your entire partition. For super sensitive information this isn’t really your best bet however. If your primary drive is unencrypted, parts of files you are working with may be cached locally in non encrypted areas of the drive. Generally office suites will maintain a revision cache as a hidden file in the same directory as the original, but content can transparently jump into your windows swap file as well.

The most useful application for using this method is in conjunction with a USB key. By creating a blob of encrypted data and carrying around the truecrypt.exe file, you can securely transport data that is safe even if you lose your thumb drive.

2. Begin The Process Of Encrypting Your System Drive

Assuming that you're ready to move ahead and encrypt your system drive, follow along through the next set of steps. If you determined based on section 1 that an encrypted container will suit your needs, you can simply click on Create Volume within the main screen. The steps that follow are very similar to what you find when you encrypt a system partition, so you can still follow along.

To start encrypting a system partition begin by clicking the System tab in the top left hand side of the window, then select Encrypt System Partition/Drive. The correct menu option is highlighted in the screen shot above.

The first choice you will have to make during the encryption process gives you a pretty good overview of just how many scenarios this suite was designed to handle. If you select the Normal system encryption, each and every sector of your hard drive will be converted to what looks like random noise and can only ever be read with your master password. Most people will want this option.

The Hidden encryption method actually allows you to create two mirror OS’s protected by different passwords. Using this method, should you be coerced into entering your password by a third party, you will have the option of using a password that presents them with a version of your OS which is completely insulated from the other. Applications for this feature for average citizens are somewhat limited, but 007 if you're reading this section, this one is for you.

Generally if you're using a home brewed PC it is safe to click Yes here, thereby allowing True Crypt to encode the host protected area. If you are using an OEM machine on the other hand, some of these systems store recovery data and RAID drivers in this area. The best way to determine if it is safe to encrypt the host area is to check and see if your system has any kind of built in recovery tools accessible during startup. If you do, and you cannot locate these files on a separate partition, your host area may be in use and shouldn’t be encrypted.

If you're not sure it’s best to say No. The information stored in the host protected area is generally not sensitive and if you answer this one incorrectly your system may simply refuse to boot following the encryption. If you do answer this incorrectly and your system refuses to boot fear not, everything we are doing here can be undone outside of Windows. Worst case scenario is that you're forced to decrypt using the rescuce CD and start over. This process is covered in the troubleshooting section. Answer the question to the best of your knowledge and click Next.

It is very important during this stage of the installation that you accurately identify if you are dual booting into multiple OS’s. Since TrueCrypt writes its own boot loader to the first sector of the drive, failure to answer this correctly will result in your boot loader being over written. Currently the only multi boot loaders that are support are the Windows MBL (this is default interface that automatically installs with Windows 2000, XP, or Vista) and the Linux alternative Grub.

If you select Multi-boot TrueCrypt will move your boot loader from the maser boot record to another sector on the hard drive, out of harm’s way. When you are ready to proceed, click Next.

3. Select An Encryption Algorithm & Create a Password

TrueCrypt is a very full featured encryption tool and the author's commitment to customization shows. When you reach the encryption options step (shown above) you will be able to pick from the dizzying array of encryption algorithms built in. But for those of you who don’t feel like putting in years of research on learning the differences of each, I highly recommend selecting AES.

Advanced Encryption Standard, which is also known as Rijndael is the encryption standard used by the U.S. government and is widely regarded as a benchmark in terms of security. In addition to being very robust, it is surprisingly lightweight computationally. What does all this mean? It gives you super strong protection and very fast encryption/decryption. This is becomes extremely important since everything you do from now on will need to be encrypted/decrypted on the fly. The default Hash Algorithm – RIPEMD-160 is a good match and doesn’t need to be changed. When you are ready to proceed, click Next.

The next screen will allow you to set your master password and this step is by far the most important yet. Many people out of habit, and convenience, select relatively weak passwords. And while a simple three letter password might be good enough to protect your Maximum PC comment account, you wouldn’t actually use “dog” to protect your bank accounts would you? Below the password selection window True Crypt will give you some tips for selecting a good password. In addition here are some practical and sound tips for selecting a password.

1.) TrueCrypt is going to strongly recommend that you select a password that is 20 characters or more. Selecting a password of this length, with a good mix of non dictionary alpha numeric’s, is generally considered “unguessable”. The only way to unlock a properly encrypted system would be to use a method known as brute force. This method essentially tries every combination of characters until it stumbles upon your password. Usually, they make use of the dictionary to help narrow down the choices. Assuming you aren’t using common words, a 20 character password could take decades to brute. Anything less will reduce the amount of time it would take a crack your code, but is still ultimately much more secure then when you started. If you don't think you can remember a 20 character password just continue ahead. You're better off picking a smaller password you can remember, then a longer one you will forget. .

2.) Need to use words for the dictionary? Try using them backwards, or splice in upper and lower case letters or punctuation.

3.) Using a number combination that might be guessable? Try using the shift key to turn them into random looking symbols.

4.) Make sure you can remember it! In the next step we will build an ISO CD that will be able to restore your computer to its current state but if you forget your password 2 months from now your out of luck. TrueCrypt offers no means of recovering you're password, lost passwords are gone forever, along with your data.

5.) If you absolutely have to write it down, don’t stick it to your monitor!

The guys at TrueCrypt clearly leave no details to chance and now give you the opportunity to salt your encryption keys by using random data generated by your mouse movements. It’s important to notice that this step, though comforting, is highly unnecessary. Before you ever move your mouse you can see from the content pool that a great deal of information already exists. This is because TrueCrypt is taking random data from all over your system before you even begin. This includes information from clocks, globally unique ID’s, serial numbers from hardware components, etc.

My point here is to simply let you know that wearing all the material off your mouse pad during this step won’t help you much. Slowly swirl your way slowly down to NEXT and click past the screen shown below that display’s a snippet of your encryption keys.

4. Create a Rescue CD

The next few screens are going to walk you through creating a rescue CD which is a required step for a very good reason. If something goes wrong during the encryption stage the rescue CD is the only tool that will allow you to recover your data. The rescue CD contains a utility which will allow you to decrypt your drive or restore your master boot record if it ever becomes damaged. Damage to the MBR can happen in many ways, but it is most often caused by some invasive form of DRM that embeds itself in the MBR or some form of malware like a root kit. Essentially anything that writes to the MBR following the installation of TrueCrypt stands a pretty good chance of making your system unbootable.

Your rescue CD is your first and last line of defense here. In the troubleshooting section we will go over how to use the rescue CD should something ever go wrong. In the dialogue box above you’re a picking a path where TrueCrypt will deposit the recovery CD's ISO file. After clicking Next you will be reminded again to burn the ISO to CD and this is where CDBurnerXP (free CD burning utility) comes in handy. This step can be “faked” by using an ISO mounting tool such Windows Virtual CDROM but doing so is not recommended and should be done so at your own peril.

It is also important that you create a Rescue disk for each separate computer you encrypt. The reasons for this are explained in the troubleshooting section if you are interested.

Assuming you were successful in verifying the rescue CD TrueCrypt will give you the option to move ahead.

5. Start With a Clean Slate by Scrubbing Your Old Data

If the disk you are encrypting is new, this step won’t be necessary. Essentially what TrueCrypt is allowing you to do here is to wipe any data that you have deleted previously, but might still be recoverable using third party tools. Because True Crypt will only encrypt your current or new files, everything done and deleted in the past will still in the clear.

You have several wipe options available to pick from and they range in both the amount of time needed, and effectiveness. The higher options also defiantly suffer from a high rate of diminishing returns. 3 pass setting is generally enough to defeat all but the most advanced and expensive governmental tools, while the 35 pass setting is insanely overkill and generally a waste of your time. Depending on the size of the drive, and the setting selected, this step can range from a few hours to several days. Once you're ready to continue click Next.

6. Run the Pretests & Get Ready to Encrypt

Next True Crypt is going to test your memory by restarting your computer, and giving you the opportunity to enter your master password for yourself.

If you fail to enter the password successfully (or have forgotten it) do not fear, your still safe at this stage. Following the reboot TrueCrypt will bring you back into Windows where you will be forced to reconfirm your master password. Since no encryption has been performed yet, this is simply a test to make sure you have your login information memorized. From this point forward, forgetting your master password will result in 100 per cent data loss (except the backups you made right?).

Now simply Click Encrypt to begin the process. You will still be able to use the OS while the encryption process is underway. The TrueCrypt driver keeps track of what data is, and is not encrypted, and operates completely transparently

Congratulations you're all done! If you ever run into any issues while booting, continue on to the troubleshooting section for a look at how to use the rescue CD.

7. Troubleshooting

The issue you are most likely to encounter at any given point is a corruption of your MBR. This will prevent you from being able to enter your password, and will likely result in errors that would suggest you are dealing with an empty drive. If this proves to be an ongoing problem, the most likely culprit is a recently installed application with an invasive form of DRM, or a root kit. Keep in mind here that all troubleshooting steps require your password. If you forget it, TrueCrypt cannot help you recover it. Any back doors or secret methods of decrypting the drive would defeat the security benefits.

When the Rescue CD boots up (shown above) you will have the option to either:

(1) Permanently Decrypt System Partition

This restores your system to its original state. You data will once again be in the clear, as it was before. Your password will be required to begin the decryption, and it’s important to note that if you are encrypting several computers, you will need to keep separate CD’s. This restore function, as well as all the tasks listed below are specific to the password you chose before creating the disk. If your password becomes compromised and you decide to change it, you should destroy the old CD as it can be used to decrypt your machine using the old passphrase.

(2) Restore TrueCrypt Boot Loader

This will repair a TrueCrypt system that refuses to boot. The rescue CD however cannot restore you password. The password is the cipher used to decrypt the information on your hard drive. The TrueCrypt boot loader is simply the means of entering it.

(3) Restore Key Data

If for any reason your password should fail to enter (and you're sure you typed it in correctly) run this function. It will prompt you to enter the password again, only this time it will be verified using encrypted data on the CD. Assuming that it matches the information encoded on the Rescue Disk, it will repair the entry on your hard drive.

(4) Restore Original System Loader

If you used step 1 to decrypt your drive, and you had a multi-boot loader installed prior to TrueCrypt's installation, you will want to run this step. When combined with step 1, your system will be completely restored to it's pre-encryption state.